Laugh & Explode
by bj
Summary: There he was, circumspecting left right and centre over failed relationships, when it was all sitting right next to him. S/J slash, Josh POV.


Disclaimer: 'The West Wing' and all related materials belong to Aaron Sorkin, NBC, and various other capitalist strongholds. If you want to pay for this, pay them, you fool.  
Author's Note: This story is, eventually, slash (it has content of a sexual/romantic nature between members of the same gender). If you don't like slash, don't read this. If you read it anyway, don't complain to me, because I like slash, and you will get no sympathy.  
  
  
Laugh & Explode  
By BJ Garrett  
  
  
We're sitting on my couch, going through the pretence of watching wrestling when both of us are itching to grab the remote and turn on Capitol Beat. Or Burden of Proof. I like Burden of Proof, but Sam is ambiguous about it.  
  
"Your mom said that?"  
  
"Yeah. You're a bad son, she said. Am I a bad son, Sam?"  
  
He considers for a long moment. Long enough to make me laugh and clarify, "For not settling down with a nice Jewish girl and bearing her a football team of grandchildren?"  
  
"No, not for that."  
  
*  
  
There was Marion Schulman. She had nice legs, I guess. Wore glasses, braces. We had American Lit together and she was going to be in my Modern History class in the spring. After a particularly long meeting of the Student's Council and Advisory Board, she asked for a ride home. I accidentally brushed her thigh as she got out of the car, and there it began.  
  
I dreamed of her every night. I walked her to class. I carried her book bag and her lunch tray--which led to a particularly nasty fall. And my first kiss. While the nurse was out of the medical office, Marion clumsily pressed her pursed lips against mine. In compensation, I guess. Whatever works.  
  
We started dating in that way junior nerds date. Movies, no touching, some fumbling pathetic attempts at making out on the way back to her house. I don't know about her, but I was reading "Sweet Valley High" books, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  
  
Then Homecoming weekend.  
  
*  
  
Suddenly, Sam says, "It went badly with Nicole the other night."  
  
I honestly didn't expect anything less. "Sorry."  
  
"It's not really your fault," he replies.  
  
Not really my fault? How is it my fault at all? "Well, good, cuz I don't want to lose any sleep over your bad date." I lose enough over my own.  
  
*  
  
I was making a solid run for third base when Marion's watch went off--she had to go home and put her headgear on. She was very sorry.  
  
So was I, at the time.  
  
It kind of petered out after that. I mean, at the game, I'd finally realised why cheerleaders wear short skirts. It was, to say the least, a revelation.  
  
*  
  
So then I was a senior, and I bought sweaters and Dockers and had my cousin Maury in Torrington paint my car red.  
  
And there was Angela. My God, what a perfect vision of a gentile she was--honey-blonde, aqua-blue, and cherry-red in all the right places.  
  
I nearly swooned. Honest.  
  
She had transferred from some school on the other side of town because of a bit of trouble. I heard she'd been sleeping with her Civics teacher. Rapture.  
  
She was in my English class, though, and I realised the one thing she didn't have in the right place was her brain.  
  
So I phoned Marion, who informed me she was a lesbian.  
  
Surprisingly, that didn't make me feel better.  
  
*  
  
I went to the prom with Karen Hilton. Not of the hotel Hiltons, of the Pawcatuck Hiltons.  
  
Her family were traditionally whalers, but her father owned a successful string of pawnshops.  
  
Need I say more?  
  
*  
  
I stumbled through college, walking the fine line between celibacy and trading sex for homework. This is the four years of potato bongs.  
  
You'd think I wouldn't remember much, but I do. They weren't very good bongs.  
  
*  
  
At graduation, I was talking to this lovely young woman from Torrance, California by the punch bowl. She had a great smile, nice legs, had read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Her name was not Marion, Angela, or Karen. It was Cassandra. Her father had nothing to do with whales or pawnshops. He was a screenwriter. It was going well.  
  
Then this kid came up and put his arm around her waist. Despite the fact that she looked disgusted, he introduced himself as her boyfriend, Sam. She slapped his hand away.  
  
"He's my cousin," Cassandra corrected, "The much-beloved idiot of the family." She looked at him, and he grinned goofily. With a regretful sigh, she added, "But he sure is cute."  
  
Whether she regretted the fact that he was her cousin, that he was cute, or that he was an idiot remains to be seen.  
  
*  
  
At one point that afternoon I gave Cassandra my phone number. Somehow it ended up in her cousin's hand, and he's been phoning me ever since.  
  
I went to law school, and a few years later so did he, and we would often get drunk and lie to each other about our myriad girlfriends and their constant demands for hot monkey sex.  
  
We are very good actors, Sam and I.  
  
*  
  
"I used to have trouble with women," Sam confesses as The Rock breaks up with some large-breasted female 'wrestler' on very live Pay-Per-View.  
  
I pretend to be surprised, and don't comment on his misuse of the phrase 'used to.'  
  
"You don't say? I can't believe it."  
  
"Yeah. And then I realised that you've just got to be yourself. Don't worry about whether or not they're judging you. Be confident. Represent."  
  
"One problem." Other than the fact that you're deluding yourself, Sam.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're cute."  
  
"Oh. Yeah."  
  
I wait a second for him to assure me that I'm cute too, but it's not happening.  
  
Do I want him to assure me that I'm cute?  
  
The Rock says no, vehemently.  
  
*  
  
So Brennan hired me as his Chief of Staff, and Sam phoned me and I said he could come work in the basement scrubbing the furnace.  
  
"When do I start?"  
  
That's what I like about Sam. More than his charming naiveté and amazing ability to memorise alphabetical lists. He's enthusiastic and he does it.  
  
Whatever it may be.  
  
*  
  
My 760 verbal came in handy many a time in those years. But I met this woman who scored something like 780. And I decided that I had to marry her. So I wooed.  
  
Don't laugh. I really did.  
  
It didn't work.  
  
"Josh, you make me laugh, but I need to explode, you know?"  
  
Sure, yeah. I understood. So I don't woo anymore.  
  
*  
  
And of course, there were many women in the minority whip offices who had matured enough to appreciate a guy who can make them laugh instead of making them 'explode.'  
  
I'm sure everyone would love to know exactly who said that, but I'm saving it for my tell-all book, "Intelligent Liaisons". Buy it at your favourite bookstore in June 2010.  
  
*  
  
Sam phoned and said he was going into contract law. Politics was too little for him.  
  
I told him he was just scared of getting left in the basement.  
  
He hung up on me. That hurt.  
  
*  
  
Marion went to Smith and became a potter. She lives in Painted Canyon or something.  
  
Angela danced for the Lakers for a few years, married a boxing promoter, and now lives in Vegas. She has a chihuahua named Josh. I thank her effusely for the honour every time I see her.  
  
Karen married and divorced the head of the Connecticut mob. Really, there is one. It's just more like a couple of strip clubs and a floating craps game than a prostitution, drug-dealing, and illegal gambling racket. She lives in a rather large stucco house in Bramford.  
  
Cassandra married an architect and moved to Brussels. I think they have kids, but I could be wrong.  
  
*  
  
"Sam?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Does Cassandra have kids?"  
  
"My cousin?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I think so. I could be wrong."  
  
There you go.  
  
*  
  
I drifted off the floor of the whip's office and onto Hoynes' campaign. I was impressed with the man's ability to politic. And bullshit. He's good at both of those. There wasn't any particular thing about him I liked, but there wasn't any particular thing I didn't like, either.  
  
He was okay, and I had resigned myself to working for okay people, because LBJ was dead, and so was the American archetype of heroic politics. I settled.  
  
Then I got a call from an old friend of my father's.  
  
*  
  
See, the difference between Hoynes and Bartlet is the political equivalent of the difference between making her laugh and making her explode.  
  
Plus, I loved how he told those dairy farmers off. It was brilliant.  
  
*  
  
I don't phone Sam. I burst into meetings. I know I've got his attention that way.  
  
"He's the real thing, Sam."  
  
He didn't believe me then, but nowadays he's the one doing the convincing.  
  
*  
  
"Don't you ever get lonely, Josh?"  
  
This is Sam asking me perhaps the one question men do not want to hear when they've just been smacked down by their mother for not having any children. We've caved and are watching Capitol Beat. Burden of Proof is also on, but it's the one Sam did while he was at Gage/Whitney and he doesn't want to watch it.  
  
"Of course. This is Josh Lyman, confirmed bachelor, you're talking to."  
  
"Bachelor by choice or by circumstance, though?"  
  
It's not like Sam to be philosophical while watching Capitol Beat. "I prefer to think it's a generous mixture of both. You know, along the lines of choice coming shortly after the circumstance of constant rejection."  
  
"So you get lonely?"  
  
I am the crown prince of stoic loneliness. Leo has the throne sewn up pretty nicely. "I just said I did."  
  
"What do you do about it?"  
  
In an attempt to lighten the mood, I begin, "The one thing I don't do is have one-night stands with--"  
  
"Please don't finish that sentence, Josh. It's a very bad sentence with which to end our friendship."  
  
True enough. I'm sure I can think of a better one.  
  
*  
  
I met a woman at a restaurant. She said her name was Mandy Hampton.  
  
"Of the Waterbury Hamptons?" I asked. My cousin Maury from Torrington married a Hampton from Waterbury. I was curious.  
  
With a raised eyebrow, she replied, "No, of the Chicago Hamptons. Are you drunk?"  
  
"Not tonight, no."  
  
I couldn't stop staring at her. She had--has--great legs. Amazing legs. And she scored 750. I settled again.  
  
We all know how that ended. I stopped phoning her, she started hating my guts. I lived in fear of my life for many months until she moved her office out of the West Wing.  
  
*  
  
Sam phoned and said I was a coward for not calling her. I told him that one day he might find himself in the same situation, and we'd find out who was the coward.  
  
We never took that conversation up again, but I think I've proved my point.  
  
I mean, I still had to work with her.  
  
He just had to hear about all the sex Mallory was having. For some reason, he assumed it was good. My illustrious career in the political bedrooms of America is living proof that you can have one without the other.  
  
Just ask Mandy. She'll be glad to tell you.  
  
*  
  
So we won. Again and again, and then Leo's 'real thing' was the real President.  
  
It seemed to happen very fast. Blurs of Sam's weary, grinning face and a sense of lost time--as if I was kidnapped by aliens somewhere at the beginning of the primaries and dropped down on the North Lawn in the middle of the inauguration.  
  
But I remember my father's funeral.  
  
That would be kind of hard to forget, even for me.  
  
*  
  
At this point one would be forgiven for expecting me to wax poetic about Donna's generous pout and elegant neck.  
  
She's cute.  
  
I'd say more, but she's really just a friend, and devoting more time to her than I have may lead to some misconstruing on the part of the reader.  
  
Just a friend. Really.  
  
Okay, I'll say this for her: she's got nice legs.  
  
*  
  
"So," Sam says heavily as the credits roll.  
  
"I don't think we're in any condition to have the kind of discussion that tone was designed for," I reply, turning the TV off and letting my feet fall off the coffee table.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"For starters, we're sober." Glancing sideways, I catch his wry smile.  
  
"Good point." He drops his chin to his chest. "That can be fixed, right?"  
  
Something's definitely not right here. "What's up?"  
  
"I don't want to be alone forever," he admits.  
  
Who does?  
  
After a second, he continues, "I think I'd, like, die, or something. I mean, I might seem perfectly happy to crash my way through the swinging life of a speechwriter, but I--"  
  
My hand has reached out and landed on his. Startled, I look down at my wayward limb. They lay on the cushion that separates us. Two Caucasian hands, distinctly male, one on top of the other.  
  
Here I've been, circumspecting left right and centre over my failed relationships, wondering how I managed to screw up so many times, when right beside me is the one person I've never really screwed up with.  
  
He never lets me. He knows me perfectly, accepts my foibles and frustrations with such grace, humour, resignation.  
  
"Josh?" Questioning, hesitant.  
  
Without looking up, I mumble, "You're not alone, you know. Never."  
  
I've always got to make it harder for myself. Looking for legs and verbal scores when all I really wanted was a pair of blue eyes and a goofy smile.  
  
There is a moment of silence, then his hand slowly turns under mine until our palms are pressed together. I hear a breath burst quietly from him just before he speaks.  
  
"I know."  
  
*  
  
I'm probably a very bad son now, but I make him laugh and explode.  
  
We agree that she'll get over it.  
  
  
The End.  



End file.
